


Aging in Autumn

by ThereButForCabbage



Category: Magic Tree House - Mary Pope Osborne
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-05-10 10:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14735669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThereButForCabbage/pseuds/ThereButForCabbage
Summary: When you spend most of your life traveling through time, and always return to the very moment you left, there may be some unwanted side effects.





	1. Chicxulub

**Author's Note:**

> Brace yourself: This sequel does not always conform to canon.

The future location of Sikes, Louisiana.

66,038,897 B.C.

Late Summer

Daybreak.

 

The sky is roaring. No—the sky itself is the roar. A brief glimpse of eerie green-yellow dawn is overtaken by clouds, horizontal rain, and sailing debris as the storm moves in. This is hurricane country, and all the residents know to seek shelter. They have evolved for this, and could no more resist the urge to take cover than the urge to eat, or mate, or flee a predator. Under normal circumstances, most of them would survive. The ancient rhythm would continue uninterrupted.

Splashing through the beginnings of a storm surge are two organisms that did not evolve in this place. They belong to a dry grassland in another continent and another time, but have a peculiar habit of showing up everywhere (and, in the case of these specimens, everywhen). Both move across open ground, doing their best to stand against the wind and dodge flying tree branches, because they know what nothing else here is equipped to know: Some time before dawn today, roughly 800 miles to the south across what will one day be called the Gulf of Mexico, a rock fell from the sky.

Unfortunately for most vertebrate life on Earth, this rock was very big, and it was moving very, very fast. When it landed it threw a cloud of smaller rocks, magma, ash, and who-knows-what up to heaven, some of it all the way into low Earth orbit. In the coming months it will dim the planet’s view of the sun, killing off plants, then herbivores, then the carnivores that love them. Notably, the death toll will include all non-avian dinosaurs. None of this is immediately relevant to the two visitors running through wind, rain, and plant-based missiles. They have not been living off the land, and carry ample food of their own. To them, what’s more interesting about the rock is that it fell into a shallow sea. Before it went _bang_ , it went _sploosh_. When rocks go _sploosh_ they kick up ripples, which travel away from the impact site and keep going until they either hit something or use up their energy and settle back into the calm. The ripple from this rock is a hundred feet high, travels at the speed of a commercial jetliner, and carries the force of a billion Hiroshima bombs.

In short, the visitors alone understand that this hurricane is a distraction.

The taller one runs ahead. His extremely practical eyewear—heavy black-framed glasses, strapped to his cranium with a wide elastic band—will never be fashionable at any point in human history, but they allow him to turn his bug-eyed visage into the rain without having to squint. His short hair, nearly black, is plastered against his scalp. He wears hiking boots, khaki cargo pants, and a matching multi-pocketed vest, all of which are saturated with water. Despite those and the heavy-duty canvas rucksack on his back, he charges forward. The wind has rendered all trees hazardous, and he is heading straight for the tallest one around.

The shorter visitor pounds a dozen yards behind. Her face is bare, her cheeks red against the wind. She runs with her head down, glancing up every few steps just to see that she’s on target, then squeezing her eyes shut against the air, water, and assorted particles trying to blind her. Having chosen a different kind of practicality than her companion’s, she juts out of the landscape in high-tech running shoes, a pink camo T-shirt, and athletic pants made from a synthetic material that barely interacts with water. Her blonde hair, wet and darkened, is held back in a tight braid. Despite her obvious limp, she is gaining ground.

The man reaches the base of the giant cycad first and begins his ascent. The woman gets there moments later and follows. Both are seasoned climbers and they make rapid progress along different routes upward, pressing their bodies tightly against the massive trunk for some small protection against the deadly wind. The woman, slowed by her sprained right ankle but unencumbered by heavy clothing and bags, pulls ahead. They are three quarters of their way up, her feet level with his face, when they sense, as much as hear, a change. Both turn to face the coast only to have their fears confirmed. The water was just an opening act, and now the Water has arrived. An enormous wave breaks on the sloping shore two hundred yards away—it would be farther, but for the hurricane—and the sea surges inland as an oddly smooth and gracile force.

 _The preferred name is “tsunami,” of course_ , the man thinks as he hauls his pack further up the knobbed trunk, _but this illustrates perfectly the phenomenon of massive sea waves—generated by earthquakes, asteroids, or what-have-you—taking the form of a tremendous inrushing tide, hence the now disfavored “tidal wave.”_ He reflects another moment. _It’s a good thing she can’t hear me thinking this, or she’d—_

His reverie ends as the tree begins to shudder. The wave has arrived. Thrown off-balance, he loses his grasp on a slick, wet notch in its heavily crenellated skin. He maintains his foothold, but with no handgrips in reach he begins to tip backward. Flailing arms slow his fall, but they will not stop it.

The woman above him has been watching the Water overtake their tree, and sees everything. She shouts his name—futilely, since no human voice could be audible under the circumstances—and dangles a leg for him to grab. He obliges. It is her right leg, and the sudden yank sends fire from her increasingly grapefruit-like ankle up through her spinal column. Never mind that. She wraps her arms around a large accommodating branch, offers her other foot, then feels the weight get even worse as he bear-hugs her legs together and loses his own foot grip. Hanging for dear life, she twists her legs to one side and crunches, drawing her knees (and anyone dangling by her shins) up toward her chest. She screams, her core muscles burning from the exertion, but it is enough of a boost for her climbing partner to recover and find something to hold. _If we survive_ , she muses, _that’s going to hurt for a week._

The diluvian current beneath them presses on unabated, fed by second- and third-order waves from the impact. The tree shudders and shifts violently, just a small angle adjustment at the base that is magnified by height. The tsunami is slowly uprooting it. At the top, a hand lunges onto a wooden structure barely distinguishable from a shipping crate and grabs hard on one side of the entry door. A second hand, just as wiry and muscular but missing the ends of the two outermost fingers, comes to assist, and together they haul their owner up and inside with a great violent yank. Before she can right herself, her partner’s shadow appears in the doorway. His boots are all wrong for shoving into narrow toe holds, and he hand-over-hands his way in with arm strength alone.

The world shifts again, and this time both climbers begin to feel gravity slowly re-orienting itself as their tree loses stability. The woman rolls onto her back, shimmies feet-first to the door, and squats against it with each foot braced against one side of the entrance. She sits up, her abs already filing complaints about that last bout of heroics. Crossing her arms one over the other, she reaches them to the man, who is having trouble getting his pack over the hump and through the door. He grabs her right wrist with his right hand, her left wrist with his left. She mirrors. They lock eyes and count wordlessly, with nodding heads. _One. Two. Three. Now_.

Just as the torrent of water digs up the last of the great cycad’s thousand-year roots—

Just as a branch torn from one of its neighbors flies with terrible speed at the entryway—

Just as a patch of sky clears for a brief moment to reveal the column of ash and fire still climbing from the impact site—

And just as their tiny abode begins an implacable tumble to the ground and the flood—

Just then, the two of them fly from one end of the box to the other, landing in a tangle. His right hand and her left clasp each other. His left hand and her partial right grope frantically for something that wasn’t there when they left, and they find it. A book. They shout in unison, they shout at speed, and they shout the top of their lungs.

_“I WISH WE WERE THERE!”_

Cotton falls over the cries of wind and water. The view outside loses focus. As the world around them starts to spin, the two partners quietly and utterly collapse onto the cramped floor. The woman casually tilts her head to one side, bringing her face-to-face with the man.

“Jinx.”

And then the world is quiet.

 

* * *

 

September 14th, 1996

First Journal Entry

 

My brother and I have our very own endocrine disorder. It’s true! It isn’t named after us because we’re “minors” and it would break confidentiality or whatever, but it’s ours anyway. Symptoms include rapid but surprisingly normal aging, crippling delusions, and short-term memory problems. Etiology unknown.

Our parents started noticing something weird around the time I was eight and he was nine: Though we’d both been on the short side of average our entire lives, we were suddenly shooting above our classmates’ heads. We were also dropping the ball on things you would expect a couple of really bright kids to be on top of, like keeping track of homework and remembering conversations from the previous night. For a while all the doctors brushed off Mom and Dad’s concerns, saying that we both seemed to be starting early (but not freakishly early) puberty, and that growth spurts and reduced executive function were to be expected. Over time, though, it got harder and harder to pretend something wasn’t up. The aging got faster—fast enough to become a social problem in school. We also got bolder about telling a few important people _why_ we were growing up too quickly, which is when the psych evals began.

Jack and I agreed on a policy of brutal honesty. We would tell the shrinks the whole truth, and even though we knew it _sounded_ crazy, we were sure the evidence would make our case for us. The story we both told, independently and in different rooms, matched our symptoms in a way no other could. Turns out, that was a case of youthful naïveté; adults don’t believe things just because they make _sense_. To be believed, a story has to fit in the little box everyone keeps in their head to remind them what can and can’t be. You need special permission to reshape the box, and a couple of late elementary school kids who claim to be in their mid-teens don’t qualify.

But this is my account, and I get to build the box. For the record, I am not sick. I’m not sure exactly how old I am anymore, but I know I’ve lived every second of my body’s age. I’ve lost track of all the fantastic things I’ve seen and done, but I saw them because they were real, not because of a mistake in my brain chemistry. I am fine—no, better than fine. My name is Anne Smith, and I am a time traveler.


	2. Debrief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brother and sister discuss their latest adventure. What is up with Jack?

Anne’s Journal

September 15th, 1996

 

I guess a little background is in order. This stuff has defined my life since I was (really) a kid, and sometimes it’s hard to remember that I need to translate my normal for other people. In case any other people ever read this thing. Am I writing for an audience or just to keep myself sane? And what does “sane” mean, anyway, when reality is so assertively unreal?

Ahem.

****I’m from a lovely little town called Frog Creek, Pennsylvania. No sarcasm now: It’s a great place to grow up. Beautiful woodlands, safe streets, and a surprisingly good public library. Isolated in a way that sets people at ease but not in the way that makes them drink too much. (It’s closer to Scranton than anything else you’ve heard of, and it isn’t very close to Scranton.) Half the doctors in town are my parents, who moved here from Houston when Mom was pregnant with Jack. They always say it was the best decision they ever made. We had a lot of free rein from a very young age, and even today there aren’t many things I enjoy doing more than just quietly _being_ in these woods. Some of it is probably an animal magic thing—which I will definitely get around to writing about one of these days, so sit tight—but beyond that, the Frog Creek woods feel more like home than anywhere else, including the house I grew up in.

****Ha! “Grew up.” I should get to the point.

****Back when I was seven and Jack was eight, we noticed a tree house way up near the top of an oak just off one of the county roads. It didn’t seem to be on anyone’s property, and it was much higher than any tree house we’d ever seen. Being veteran explorers of a small patch of forest land, we were also pretty sure it hadn’t been there the day before. Long story short, we were up there faster than you can say “NO TRESPASSING” and found that it contained a load of books, all non-fiction and mostly historical. Then we discovered the fun way that if you wish aloud to go to a scene depicted in any one of the books, you do. The tree house takes you there.

****I guess if you’re still reading this, the worst you’re thinking is that at least you’ve stumbled across the journal of an _interesting_ lunatic. Well, it gets better. The tree house turned out to have an owner: one Morgan le Fay, an early medieval enchantress and half-sister, through their shared mother, of King Arthur, and I’m just going to stop apologizing for how unlikely anything seems and you, dear reader, are going to deal with it. We are all about expanding our horizons around here, but sometimes it pays to accept what you’re hearing and not ask too many questions.

****

* * *

 

****“I have so, so many questions.” The woman, flat on her back, could barely say those words without stopping for air. “Like for _gasp_ instance, why _gasp_ were we really th— _gasp_ there. And gasp also, why _gasp_ can’t I breathe?”

****The man was also prone. He opened his mouth, encountered the same problem, then raised one finger in a “wait a moment” gesture. After a few minutes he felt confident enough to speak.

****“Earth’s atmosphere during the late Cretaceous was thirty percent oxygen. Today it’s twenty-one percent. Didn’t you notice how you never had to catch your breath when we were there?”

****The woman considered this. “I guess we did have kind of a superhero thing going on during the escape run.” She frowned and sat up. “You dodged my first question. Why _were_ we there?”

****“I told you already. Nobody’s ever found a dinosaur fossil anywhere in Louisiana. I thought it was worth a look, maybe add something to the world’s knowledge.” This was a subtle dig, and it was ignored.

****“Okay, so why that exact moment?”

****“The fossil record indicates”—and here he put on his lecturer voice—“that dinosaur diversity continued to increase right up until the end. It made sense to look at the peak of their taxonomic efflorescence in order to give us the best chance of finding a—”

****“Oh, come _on_ , Jack! Wouldn’t it have been the same a hundred years earlier? Maybe even a thousand?” Silence. “Was it really important that we record the state of dino biodiversity during the final thirty seconds of their existence?!”

****“We were there a lot longer than thirty seconds.”

****“You know what I’m saying.”

****No answer.

****“You’ve wanted to see the Chicxulub impact since we were children.”

****“Anne, we _are_ children.”

****“Jack!”

****“Technically, is all I’m saying.”

****“Jack, what are you doing?”

****He blinked. “What do you mean?”

****“Everywhere we’ve gone lately, is what I mean. Look, I’m happy to let you take the wheel as long as you’re not driving like a crazy person, but since when are we in the permanent death-defiance business? What was Baikonur about? And London—”

****“Which time?”

****“1483. And Strasbourg, and Green Mountain, and … and Tunguska, did we ever really talk about _Tunguska_?”

****“There was a perfectly valid—”

****“I know. _I know._ There’s always a ‘perfectly valid,’ but we have some choice, right? There are so many things to explore that don’t want to kill us, and for some reason you’re hell-bent on the kinds of things that do. Something’s … something’s changed in you. Remember when I was the risk-taker and you had to hold me back?”

****“I never succeeded,” Jack observed with half a grin. “Who’s to say you haven’t changed just as much?”

****“I’ve grown up. I’m not against adventure or anything like that, but Christ, we really, really could have died today.” She paused. Again no response. “Do you ever think about that? Like, what would happen if we died on an expedition? I guess we would just enter the tree house and vanish as far as anyone here was concerned. No trace at all.”

****Jack got a faraway look in his eyes. It lasted only a moment, but Anne only needed a moment. It would be cliché to say that the siblings could read each other like books, but perhaps more importantly, it would be giving literacy too much credit.

****“You’re imagining what would’ve happened if we’d died and our fossilized remains had been found in Louisiana, aren’t you?”

****“Only briefly. Then it occurred to me that fossilization would have been unlikely under those conditions.”

****Anne, who had been lying on her back with her head propped up, finally rolled onto her stomach and then slowly drew herself up onto her knees. The tree house was scaled for children, and few adults could stand comfortably on the inside. The mere thought of standing reminded her of the ankle injury she’d suffered. She resisted the urge to look at it.

****“Whatever’s going on, it’s got to stop. We’re supposed to have a future.”

****Jack let a trace of irritation cross his face. “Who’s ‘we’?”

****“What’s that supposed to mean?”

****“Your future is laid out. Mine isn’t.”

****“What? Nothing’s laid out. I’ve got things I’m supposed to do, but that doesn’t mean—”

****“You have them, Anne. I don’t. All of … _this_ ”—he gestured around the tree house—“was never about me.” He collected his pack and turned for the exit. It’s hard to storm out of a room whose low ceiling forces you to crawl, crouch, or knee-walk, and that lacks a door to slam. He did his best. Anne said nothing as he left, but, ladders being ladders, he had to face her before he passed out of sight. Over years of uncertain encounters with strange people, his sister had somehow perfected one facial expression that you could read any way you wanted to. Anger? Concern? Pity? Contempt? He indulged her and read it the way he saw fit, then climbed down. After a few seconds the noise and vibrations of a rope ladder in use stopped, and then reversed. Jack’s face re-emerged at the threshold.

****“Er … do you need help getting down? Your ankle.”

****Anne shook her head. “I’ll be fine, thanks.”

****Then he was gone.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what holds readers on the edges of their seats? Following an action-packed opening with a chapter of nothing but dialogue!


	3. Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne explains. Jack makes a friend.

Anne’s Journal

 

September 16th, 1996

 

I’m off my feet for a few days. Injured looking for dinosaurs. Didn’t find any. Trying to put that behind me for now.

I haven’t been super clear about the deal with my age, and my brother’s. After we discovered the tree house we began going on missions for Morgan le Fay, the owner, and later for Merlin. Yes, that Merlin. You should be used to this kind of thing by now. Whenever we went to another time and place in the tree house, we would have some task to do. When we completed it, a book on Pennsylvania would appear and allow us to return home on a wish. If that seems like a harsh way to keep discipline with two grade schoolers, well, you’re not wrong. Welcome to 6th century British family values! But here’s the important thing: When we got back from a mission, we reappeared in the tree house in Frog Creek the instant after we had left. That means that, whenever we used the tree house, time passed for us that didn’t pass for anyone else.

We returned from our first mission (which was also about dinosaurs now that I think of it) maybe an hour after we’d left, so from the rest of the world’s viewpoint we both aged about an hour in the blink of an eye. That’s not much, but over time our missions got more complex, and that made them longer. I now realize that they changed based on what we could handle, and since being older meant being smarter, stronger, and more mature, accelerated ageing qualified us for even longer missions, which made us age _even faster_ as far as everyone else was concerned. If you made a graph with my legal age on the X axis and my real, lived age on the Y axis, it would be a gentle upward-climbing swoosh, like an exponent.

Jack tried for a while to keep track of our real ages by logging how much time we spent on missions. The problem is that modern electronics _really_ don’t get along with magic, and magic always wins. (Somewhere in our basement there’s a shoebox full of wrist watches and stopwatches that no longer keep accurate time now that they’ve visited the past, including a Lisa Frank watch that’s stopped forever because it glows white hot and gives off noxious fumes whenever we put in a battery.) I was born on January 3rd, 1985, but anyone who meets me can plainly see that I’m a woman in her early 20s … who can pose as a boy whenever the mission requires it, which is more often than you think. I blame Dad’s side of the family for this useful set of traits.

Mom and Dad decided to pull us out of school when Jack was a ten-year-old who had to shave and I was an eight-year-old skipping recess due to cramps. For a while they tried to stagger their work schedules and teach us at home, which was a disaster for all kinds of reasons. Then one day—thank you, AOL!—they stumbled upon “unschooling.” It’s homeschooling without a set curriculum. Kids learn what they want on their own time. Mom once told me that it was like getting permission to do what they’d sensed was the right thing all along, since we’d been learning all kinds of interesting stuff on our own that school clearly hadn’t been teaching us. As long as we promised to keep up with some math textbooks and not be obviously truant during the day, we could do as we pleased.

 

* * *

 

January 6th, 1994

 

Frog Creek, boondock that it was, didn’t have many organized programs for kids. The town board of directors had come to understand long ago that their low population and modest land values meant funding a full suite of public amenities would be impossible if any of them were to be any good, so instead they had voted to focus property tax revenue on a couple of important projects, namely a good school and a full-service library. With no scouting troop or 4-H, and too few kids to make any kind of decent sports team, the library grew to be an important community center. It was a good place to go when the weather was bad and the churches, served by part-time visiting preachers, were both closed.

School was out following two days of snowfall since the teachers, who mostly lived out of town, couldn’t drive on the unplowed gameland roads. The library, staffed by a few paid locals and a lot of volunteers, was busy. Most of the building was held under standard library decorum, but a few rooms had been designated “loud” rooms for children of different ages who had to blow off some steam on a short day that would barely reach 20 degrees. Outside the loud rooms people read, wrote, and played cards and other games.

A girl sat at one of the long tables, her face scrunched in concentration. She was meticulously applying permanent marker to one of a stack of tongue depressors, copying an ancient ideograph from the book she’d laid open in front of her and weighed down with small bean bags. Eventually she would bind them together, a project she had already organized and purchased materials for. This deep dive craftwork was reassuringly familiar—she could have been doing it anywhere, so there was no need to think about, or even notice, her surroundings.

Nearby, a boy was so engrossed in pretending to read his geology textbook that it took up as much mental energy as actually reading the book would have. As if being an unfamiliar face—yes, about his age, and yes, observably female—weren’t enough, the girl a table over had clearly been engaged in something tedious and intellectual for the past quarter of an hour, which went a long way in his book. Throw in a haircut, corrective eyewear, and overall sartorial instincts that were too unfashionable to set off his mean-kid sense. Really, the only way this could be better would be if he knew anything about her at all.

Suddenly she wasn’t alone. Two boys sat down on either side of her with grins on their faces. One abruptly used his index fingers to pull back the corners of his eyes.

The girl glanced toward the boy making the face, which he dropped the moment she was looking straight at him. His partner on the other side adopted the same mask, drawing his eyes closed almost to slits on the process. She turned to him and he quickly retreated to his natural expression as his partner reached up to his own eyes again.

“What is wrong with you two?”

One of the boys offered his best impression of affronted innocence, which wasn’t very good. “We just wanted to see what you were working on! It looks so interesting.” The girl rolled her eyes and went back to her work. “I’m serious! What is that you’re making?”

“I’m making a replica of a book from the Warring States Period,” she said, relenting.

“That’s a book?” For a moment the boy sounded genuinely curious.

“They made books by writing on strips of bamboo and binding them together to make mats.” The boys were silent, which she took as a good sign. “They lasted a long time. Some of them are still around.”

“No kidding” said the second boy, who hadn’t yet spoken. “They read that where you’re from?”

“I’m from San Diego.”

“Originally, I mean.”

“I’m _originally_ from San Diego.”

The first boy, ignoring her, spoke again. “Guess they couldn’t figure out how to make normal books. Lot easier, right?”

The girl’s tone grew defensive. “They hadn’t invented paper yet.”

“Maybe they should’ve asked. Bet we could’ve sold them some paper real cheap. That’s where cheap stuff comes from, right? They’d like that.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

All three heads turned to the next table over, where the boy with the textbook had spoken. He seemed slightly embarrassed at the force behind his question. Normally he wasn’t the kind of person to show much bravery in face of taunting peers, but there was no room in his world for ignorance and stupidity. And he thought she was kind of cute. And he’d opened his mouth without thinking first.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the first boy asked.

“Uh … just what I said. Who’s the ‘we’ in that question? Who’s supposed to sell paper to ancient China?” This got no reaction beyond puzzled looks. “It doesn’t really matter. There was no paper. Nobody had it before China, because they invented it. They just hadn’t, yet.”

“Listen, freak, maybe you should—”

“Also, there wasn’t much competition. What do you think _your_ ancestors were reading during the Warring States Period? That’s four-seventy-five to two-twenty-one BC.” He looked pointedly at the second boy. “Ireland didn’t know how to read yet, William. They weren’t even scratching _ogham_ lines into rocks.”

“Freako is boring me,” said the first boy. “Let’s find someone less annoying.” The two got up and left.

For a minute or two, the room was still again. It was not the quiet of people getting on with their work, but the quiet of two awkward teenagers each wondering how to start a conversation. Eventually the girl, having cleverly decided not to try and be clever, spoke first.

“I thought I’d met everyone my age here, but I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“Uh, hi. My name is Jack Smith!” he declared too loudly. People turned to look. Somehow his lack of guile was a lot less graceful than hers. He felt his cheeks start to redden, and wondered if there were something else he ought to say. Eventually she filled it in for him, more quietly.

“Jennifer Liu. Nice to meet you, Jack Smith.” Jack felt like an idiot, but allowed himself to notice that she was smiling. “You’re not in the school here, are you?”

Jack shook his head. “My sister and I are homeschooled.”

“Oh. Is your family really religious or something?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s … a medical thing.”

This time it was her turn to blush. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“No! It’s okay. Not a big deal. It’s just … it’s hard to be in school sometimes, so we have different arrangements. We’re not dying or anything.” He finally got up to walk over, and she had to admit that he didn’t _look_ sick. In fact, he moved like someone who got a lot of exercise. She also noted that something about his skin tone seemed odd, almost as if he had a tan, but she dismissed the thought. It was January, and the indoor tanning businesses she’d seen in California hadn’t made much headway in rural northern Pennsylvania.

(Had they met a few years later, Jennifer might have decided that he looked uncannily like a certain celebrated boy wizard. Or, perhaps, how that wizard might have looked if he’d ever managed to comb his hair. Jack was aware of the resemblance, but saw little point in mentioning it to anyone since the illustrations that looked so much like him hadn’t been drawn yet.)

Jack, who was usually more of a things person than a people person, found his eye line bouncing between the girl and her work. If he were honest with himself, she was far more interesting than the book, but he was uncomfortable doing anything that might express that too outwardly. Instead he looked at the book, which was upside-down from his perspective, and blurted out “Hey, is that _Niúláng Zhīnǚ_?”

“You can _read_ it?” Other library patrons were staring at them again.

Jack grinned. “Home schooling is pretty good when you do it right.”

“You learned to read _seal script_ at home? _Here_?” She looked around, and suddenly seemed to regret something. “Sorry. I … I didn’t mean anything by ‘here.’ It’s just that my parents can barely read this. Even my grandmother says she can only make out about seventy-five percent of it, and Chinese is her first language.”

“My parents leave a lot of choices up to us.” He gave his best casual shrug. “I like languages.”

“And really old writing?”

“The older the better. You never know when it might be useful.”

“Does it come in useful a lot?”

“Well,” he said, hesitating. “It made a pretty good conversation starter just now.”

Jennifer’s mean kid detection algorithm wasn’t so different from Jack’s, and his awkwardness was almost endearing. “I guess it did, Jack Smith.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seal script is a family of Chinese writing forms that eventually gave rise to modern Chinese script. For some visual examples, [see here](http://www.beyondcalligraphy.com/seal_script.html).
> 
>  _Niúláng Zhīnǚ_ is the Mandarin name for the story of the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, which plays a prominent role in _Magic Tree House #14: Day of the Dragon King_.
> 
> Frog Creek’s civic planning choices were inspired by a rural town in Wisconsin with which I have some connections.


	4. Faces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack's friend pokes holes in the story he's been living.

Anne’s Journal

 

September 17th, 1996

 

My ankle no longer looks like a grapefruit, but I’m still out of commission. Mom brought me the new Anne Rice from the library, and Jack came by to drop off his own choice of reading material “for your education.” He’s been trying to get me to read this stuff for years. Five volumes on the nature of space and time, which he insists will change how I understand what we do. I keep putting it off, but now I think I need to put aside escapism and genies so I can make him happy.

We’ve been fighting. It’s his fault, really, but he’s also the one hurting more right now and I think I have to take the reins and fix this. We’ll get around it but … do you have any idea what it feels like, dear reader, when the only person in the world with any hope of understanding you is mad at you? My life is pretty lonely on a good day, and at times like this it only gets worse.

Want to know something funny about our magic tree house business? For a really long time we never considered why we were doing what we were doing. I guess we were like much younger children that way. Dad likes to talk about how as a toddler I always wanted to help him with everything he was doing, even if he was on the phone with an insurance company and I had no idea what was going on. I just assumed I could make myself useful, and any time he did have a job for me (which might have just been a distraction so he could get real work done) I took it seriously. Of _course_ he needed my help. Who wouldn’t be better off with me helping out?

So, why exactly did a witch from post-Roman Britain need a couple of American school kids to run her errands? We didn’t ask.

 

* * *

 

 

February 18th, 1994

 

Jack had been milling around near the high school for almost twenty minutes, having shown up early and brought nothing to do. A steady trickle of students had been leaving since the last bell rang, but nobody he really wanted to see. He did his best to seem nonchalant as his peers, whom he had once considered the Big Kids, strolled past him. He reflected upon the wisdom of not having brought a book, since he never knew quite what to do with his hands when he wasn’t carrying one. He worried that he had under-dressed for the high-40s weather, and while he wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, he was aware that everyone around him had a jacket and might find it odd that he didn’t.

Finally, after two false starts, he positively identified a small figure emerging from the double front doors. She was unmistakable in a loud and heavily insulated jacket. Symmetrical pastel polygons swish-swished past each other as she marched, arms swinging, down the front steps of the school building. Well before reaching conversational distance, she caught sight of him and held up both hands in a “what the heck?” gesture. Jack felt a momentary stab of anxiety. He was pretty sure they’d arranged to meet today after school, but right after that conversation he’d spent two weeks in Constantinople (not yet Istanbul) and he wondered whether he’d gotten the dates confused. Showing up unannounced would seem weird and clingy, and she wouldn’t want to spend time with him anymore. He waved weakly.

Jennifer made a beeline for him, and he braced for an unpleasant conversation about what he was doing there. Surely he’d screwed this up. When she reached him, though, she grabbed both his hands and sandwiched them between hers (gloved), then spoke in the manner of exasperated parents and expat Californians since time immemorial.

“How on earth are you not freezing right now?!”

“Uh,” he said, taking a moment to recover his composure, such as it was. “I’m fine. Aren’t you—”  _don’t say hot it would be a very bad idea to call her hot_ “—sweltering under all that?”

“I’ve spent most of my life, like, five feet away from Mexico,” she replied. “And anyway, I have a very high surface-to-volume ratio. If I’m going to survive here I think I’ll have to eat donuts until I’m spherical. Better heat retention.”

“Maybe you should have one extra donut and become an oblate spheroid. It would keep you from rolling around when the wind picks up.”

“Agreed. Let’s get started.” She threaded an absurdly puffy turquoise arm between his arm and torso, and pinned his elbow to her as she walked, leaving him the choice to either follow along or risk some kind of dislocation. He caught up after a step and a half, and they headed down the road that led in the general direction of both of their houses. Jack felt a thrill of intimacy, but also wondered whether she’d be doing this in warmer weather. Between the gloves and the jacket, they weren’t actually touching.

All the way, they talked—about her adjustment to ninth grade and his life without grades; about the best parts of their respective hometowns, and the worst; about being a city kid in the country, and being a country kid raised by city folk; about _Star Trek: The Next Generation_ ; about their dream jobs; about her inevitable return to southern California once her parents’ field research was finished; about the tree species best suited to climbing; about walking into a warm building from the freezing outdoors while wearing glasses; about stories. Jack, after expending whatever patience he could muster, asked Jennifer whether she’d read the pages he’d given her.

“Yeah, I did,” she said. “You’re really creative, you know. You could turn this into a kids’ book series or something.” They walked a few seconds in silence. “I do think you have a little work to do if you want the stories to seem realistic.”

“Realistic?” Jack did his best to chuckle nonchalantly. “They’re about kids who travel through time and space using magic. They’re not _supposed_ to be realistic.”

“Well, yeah, I just accepted that part. That’s not what I meant. What happens when they visit other cultures? In Asia and Africa and places like that?”

“Um … they have adventures and learn things?”

“Right. And nobody they meet is ever really surprised to see them. It’s just … when they go back to the Qin Dynasty and meet the emperor … if it were real, everyone would be freaking out just looking at them.”

“Why? How do you know that?”

Jennifer raised an eyebrow. “Have you looked at my face lately?”

 _Every chance I get_. “Hey, I didn’t … look, you’re American, right? I wouldn’t assume you’re an expert on ancient China just because your family—”

“That’s not what I mean, Jack.” She sighed. “I don’t fit here. Half the people I’ve met in Frog Creek, I’m the first Chinese person—the first _Asian_ person—they’ve ever seen. The other half, I’m the second or third, because they met my parents first. Most of them are nice, if we can set aside a few racist idiots from school, but they still look at me like I’m an exhibit at the zoo. I don’t look like a _person_ to Frog Creek people. Wrong eyes, wrong nose, wrong hair, wrong skin. I see it in their faces every day.” They had stopped walking by now, paused on the side of the road. She stared past Jack, into the bare trees. Almost to herself, she added, “It’s exhausting.”

Jack wasn’t sure how to handle this new direction. “You definitely look like a person,” he offered.

“To you and Annie and your parents, for some reason.”

“My parents are from a big city and they went to med school. Dad lived in Tokyo for a year right after high school. They’ve seen more of the world.”

“And you?”

Jack shrugged.

“The kids in your story, they’re white, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Then they should feel what I feel here, whenever they go some place where their faces are wrong. Even if people are being polite, which they wouldn’t always be, the feeling should be there. Every look, every conversation. I don’t think I can suspend my disbelief if that isn’t part of the story you’re telling.”

Jack blinked. He blinked again. “It would be hard to write. I don’t know how that feels.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“Yeah,” he said, blankly. “Of course I don’t.”

 

* * *

 

 

_I could be lost inside their lies without a trace  
But every time I close my eyes I see your face_

Jack knocked again on the closed door. No response. He couldn’t decide whether his sister was ignoring him, or just couldn’t hear him over the too-loud CD player and her own intermittent belting.

He waited. No response. He knocked louder.

The door swung open.

_If I ever lose my faith in you_  
_(If I ever lose my faith in you)_  
_There'd be nothing left for me to do_  
_(There'd be nothing left for me to do)_

“What’s up?!” Annie shouted. She was a foot taller than the little girl Jack had chased up that rope ladder the first time. By their best guess, she was twelve and a half years old.

“Can we turn down the music?” asked Jack.

“Can we wait until the music is _done_?”

Jack leaned against the doorframe, closed his eyes, and counted out five _in yous_. Annie paused the CD, flopped down on her bed, and let her head hang off the edge while lying on her back to look at him upside-down.

“So?”

He’d been rehearsing his question, but it had all left him. _Should have made note cards_ he thought.

“Annie … um … something I’ve been wondering. You know when we go places where people look … different?”

Annie gave him a quizzical look in lieu of an answer.

“I mean, different from us. Right? Ethnically, I mean.”

Annie, who clearly had no idea where this was going, nodded slowly. Her twin braids thumped lightly against the bed frame.

“Have you ever noticed how nobody … you know … nobody ever seems to _notice_ that we look … different from _them_?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like with the time we went back and met Qin Shi Huang. Or those ninjas in medieval Japan. Or the one Maasai guy? Or even when we went to Athens. We look European, but when you think about it we don’t really look Greek. More English, I guess. Anyway, you’d think we would have attracted more attention, right?”

Annie shrugged, which lost some effect because of her position. “The tree house changes our clothing when it needs to, right? Maybe it hides our real faces. Maybe we looked Chinese when we were in China.”

“But I saw your face. You looked the way you always do. Did I look different?”

“No … but maybe we can’t see it. Like how the magic also translates languages for us. We sound like we’re speaking English to _us_ , but everyone else thinks we’re talking in Turkish or whatever.”

Jack furrowed his eyebrows. “Maybe? I hadn’t thought of that. But it seems … I don’t know. It translates our language and faces for them, and their language for us? Isn’t that too easy?”

“You think it’s _too easy_? Where did this come from, anyway? You’ve never asked about it before.”

“Er … conversation I was having today.”

“Conversation with who?”

“Jennifer. From town.” Annie sat up abruptly, her face suddenly white. Jack jumped to fill in the gaps. “It was hypothetical! I didn’t tell her anything. We made a deal, right? Not making that mistake again.”

“You’re _sure_?”

“Yes I’m _sure_. Come on.”

“Just be careful, okay? You don’t want your girlfriend deciding you’re nuts.”

“My what?” Jack asked, feeling himself blush and wishing he could stop it.

Annie snorted. “Come on! I’ve seen you around her. And even the way you talk about her. ‘Jennifer from town.’ Ha!”

“Stop it. It’s not like that. We’re friends.”

Annie stared probingly at his face for a few seconds. Her smile faded. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t know.”

“Know what? There’s nothing to know.”

“Of course there is, Jack. Come on. Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re happy with you and her right now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She sighed. “Being stoic isn’t the same thing as being a good liar, kiddo. You’re not fooling anybody.”

Jack didn’t say anything.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I approve. She’s really nice. So are her parents.”

“You’ve met her parents?”

“No, but they spend a lot of time in the woods. Doing some kind of research, I guess. I was talking to a yellow-spotted salamander last week that said they were very careful not to step on anybody.”

“Oh brother.”

“Jack! You know I can talk to animals.”

“I know you have an active imagination.”

“You _know_ I’ve translated messages from animals that were true!”

“And every time it’s been an animal who turned out to be an enchanted human.”

Annie said nothing. She didn’t want to have this fight again. Jack didn’t take the hint.

“Just because Sally the Salamander—”

“Ingrid.”

“What?”

“Her name was Ingrid.”

“Whatever. You probably heard me mention that her parents are wetland biologists. That’s why they’re here for a year.”

“I think you should go.”

“Annie—”

“I didn’t ask for you to come here and be difficult, okay? Look, I really am sorry about Jennifer. She’s cool in a Jack way. But right now I need you to leave me alone.” She fixed a stare and wouldn’t let it go.

Jack, knowing he’d made his point and a mess besides, dutifully got up and left the room, closing the door behind him. As the music opened up again, he wondered whether he felt satisfied with Annie’s explanation. A face translator? When you live with magic it’s hard to think in terms of realistic and unrealistic, but something felt off about that.

_This is a story of seven brothers_  
_We had the same father but different mothers_  
_We keep together like a family should_  
_Roaming the country for the common good_

Annie was in her closet with the door shut. She was talking loudly into cupped hands, trying to speak over the music without making so much noise that she’d be overheard in the hallway. In her hands was cradled a stray housefly. She moved the hand-cage up to her ear. Was the fly really answering her? It felt that way, but the answer sounded like her own thoughts, not outside words she could hear. It always felt that way.

_Love is stronger than justice_  
_Love is thicker than blood_  
_Love, love, love is stronger than justice_  
_Love is a big fat river in flood_

She let the fly go, which either it wanted or she imagined it wanted. Or was it just a safe guess? She’d lost count of all the times she’d wondered—without ever telling anyone, not even the animals—whether she really belonged in magic. One more time wouldn’t hurt anybody.

It hurt anyway, though.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mostly write fanfic to exorcise ideas that pop into my head when I overthink stuff. Can you tell?
> 
> It's so much fun adding period color to this story. For a good time, google "90s winter jacket" (without the quotes) to see the kind of thing Jennifer might have been wearing in the middle section of the chapter.
> 
> In case I'm trying anyone's patience here: They go on another mission next chapter.


End file.
